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PHYSICIAN  AND  HUMAN 
CONSERVAHON 


THE  LIBRARY 

OF 

THE  UNIVERSITY 

OF  CALIFORNIA 

LOS  ANGELES 


THE  lPHYSICIAN    AND    HUMAN 
CONSERVATION, 


JAMES     H.  ^  c  B  R  I  D  E,^  M.D. 

PASADENA,     CALIF. 


Reprinted  from  the  Archives  of  Neurology  and  Psychiatry 
August,  1919,  Vol.  II,  pp.  149-157 


CHICAQO 

American   Medical  Association 

Five  Hundred  and  Thirty-Five  North   Dearborn    Street 

1919 


or^iVERSITY  of  CALIFOJRNI/ 

AT 

LOS  ANGELES 

LIBRARY 


The  Physician  and  Human  Conservation 


JAMES     H.     McBRIDE,     M.D. 

PASADENA,     CALIF. 


'l    '*» 


\^\r 


THE    PHYSICIAN    AND    HUMAN    CONSERVATION* 
JAMES     H.     McBRIDE,     M.D. 

PASADENA,     CALIF. 

On  this  occasion,  when  you  might  expect  me  to  speak  in  the  line  of 
the  specialty,  the  subject  of  human  conservation  may  seem  rather 
remote.  It  has  none  of  the  interest  of  novelty  and  has  no  problems 
for  the  laboratory  except  that  oldest  of  laboratories  in  which  the 
problems  of  life  are  being  solved.  The  subject  is  familiar,  but  life  is 
made  of  familiar  things  of  which  we  find  it  necessary  frequently  to 
remind  ourselves,  and  experience  teaches  that  it  is  much  more  profit- 
able to  be  reminded  than  to  be  instructed. 

The  existence  of  so  much  disease  that  is  preventable,  the  increasing 
amount  of  insanity,  feeble-mindedness  and  imbecility  that  are  usually 
evidence  of  individual  and  family  degeneracy,  the  poor  showing  of 
young  men  in  our  recent  war  conscription,  and  other  conditions  of  bad 
import  too  numerous  to  be  recounted  have  led  me  to  consider  at  this 
time  the  subject  of  disease  prevention  and  human  conservation.  This 
can  only  be  a  suggestion,  as  there  is  no  time  to  frame  an  argument;  it 
can  only  be  a  hint  of  the  facts,  not  a  presentation  of  them. 

My  subject  is  not  so  remote  from  our  specialty  as  it  may  seem,  for 
we  are  interested  in  disease  and  its  prevention,  and  conservation  deals 
with  both.  The  great  merit  of  prevention  is  that  it  begins  at  the  source 
and  that  is  the  place  to  stop  trouble.  •  To  bring  a  dying  man  back  to 
life  and  health  is  more  attractive  and  picturesque  than  the  homely 
process  of  preventing  him  from  being  sick.  Just  a  plain  healthy  man 
may  be  useful,  but  he  is  not  necessarily  interesting  —  society,  how- 
ever, prefers  that  a  man  should  first  be  healthy.  We  have  wasted  a 
vast  amount  of  human  material  in  the  past  through  mere  neglect ;  we 
have  wasted  as  much  more  through  being  satisfied  to  care  for  the 
wreckage,  without  considering  how  to  stop  the  supply.  The  result  has 
been  that  while  we  have  been  building  hospitals  and  asylums,  disease 
has  been  increasing  with  the  growth  of  population,  so  that  the  age-old 
"pestilence  that  walketh  in  darkness,"  in  the  form  of  devitalizing  con- 
ditions, has  been  breeding  disease  and  degeneracy  and  pouring  its 
victims  through  the  gates  of  charity. 


*  Presidential    address    before    the    American    Neurological    Association    at 
Atlantic   City.  N.  J.,  June   17-18,   1919. 


139885 


There  is  much  unused  power  in  the  medical  profession  in  this 
country,  some  of  which  might  surely  be  devoted  to  educating  the  public 
to  understand  the  importance  of  human  conserv^ation.  Resolutions  of 
societies  and  well-meaning  presidential  addresses,  unassisted  by  organ- 
ized effort,  will  probably  get  no  farther  than  to  illustrate  the  infant 
death  rate  of  good  intentions. 

The  physician  witnesses  the  growth  and  the  unmaking  of  men  in  a 
way  that  others  do  not.  He  sees  that  simple,  wholesome  living  pro- 
duces healthy  and  eft'ective  lives.  He  sees  untrained  and  therefore 
incompetent  men  and  women  struggling  in  a  bad  environment,  becom- 
ing prematurely  old. -octogenarians  at  forty.  He  sees  children  who  are 
underfed  and  dwarfed  in  mind  and  body  repeating  later  in  their  own 
incompetence  the  incompetent  lives  of  their  parents. 

We  doctors  have  in  the  main  been  carr}*ing  on  an  ambulance 
service  in  the  past,  that  is,  we  have  been  picking  up  the  injured.  It 
has  been  a  great  work  unequaled  by  any  other  human  agency.  It  has, 
however,  been  a  partial  service,  in  that  it  has  dealt  mainly  with  results 
and  has  achieved  relatively  little  in  the  way  of  prevention.  This  was 
unavoidable  as  it  has  been  only  within  the  past  few  decades  that  our 
knowledge  of  the  obscure  sources  of  many  diseases  and  degeneracies 
has  permitted  the  formulation  of  a  general  plan  for  health  conservation 
that  would  accomplish  such  results  as  are  today  possible. 

PLAN     FOR    CCXSERV.\TIOX     OF     HE.\LTH     NEEDED 

A  conservation  plan  should  be  much  more  than  one  to  prevent  con- 
tagious diseases  or  even  to  prevent  all  disease.  It  should  be  a  plan 
for  human  reconstruction  in  the  broadest  sense,  not  alone  for  cripples 
or  for  defectives,  but  for  rebuilding  the  bodies  of  all  the  people, 
beginning  with  childhood  and  not  necessarily  ending  with  completed 
growth.  Such  a  plan  should  be  administered  by  the  government.  The 
business  of  the  profession  will  be  to  secure  the  adoption  of  a  plan. 
It  will  require  the  united  eft'orts  of  physicians  acting  in  every  com- 
munity to  educate  the  people  and  show  them  what  human  conserva- 
tion means.  Unless  the  general  public  can  be  convinced  of  the  neces- 
sity for  it.  the  government  will  be  slow  to  put  a  constructive  program 
in  force. 

The  large  number  of  our  young  men  who  could  not  pass  the  exam- 
ination for  the  army  during  the  recent  war  furnished  convincing  e\i- 
dence  that  there  is  in  this  countr}-  a  great  deal  of  poor  physical  develop- 
ment. It  is,  too.  quite  possible  that  some  defects  were  overlooked,  but 
certainly  enough  were  exposed  to  show  the  physical  vigor  of  Americans 
is  not  what  it  mieht  be  or  what  it  oueht  to  be.    The  fact  that  so  much 


degeneracy  was  shown  to  exist  in  persons  of  the  ages  of  those  exam- 
ined, would  indicate  that  there  are  others  older  and  others  younger  who 
are  equally  at  fault  physically.  The  humiliating  revelations  of  these 
army  examinations  are  an  admonition  to  the  country  to  see  that  the 
boys  and  girls  of  our  day  have  the  training  that  will  enable  them  to 
meet  successfully  the  tests  of  active  life. 

There  is  fortunately  a  growing  interest  in  the  medical  profession 
in  preventive  measures  which  is  reflected  in  activities  of  various  states 
and  in  that  of  the  general  government.  The  health  work  in  cities, 
the  community  nursing,  the  follow-up  work  of  dispensaries  and  hos- 
pitals, the  new  interest  in  housing  one  of  the  biggest  of  human  prob- 
lems, these  and  many  other  activities  are  educating  the  public  for  the 
comprehensive  program  that  will  some  day  come. 

NATIONAL    HEALTH    PLAN 

We  have  also  in  recent  years  been  moving  toward  a  national  health 
plan  in  the  activities  of  the  marine  hospital  service,  the  work  of  the 
Surgeon-General's  Office  and  the  annual  health  lectures  provided  by 
the  American  Medical  Association.  The  next  step  should  be  a  com- 
prehensive plan  for  the  entire  country.  It  is  not  possible  nor  necessary 
to  suggest  a  scheme  here,  but  if  the  profession  could  induce  congress 
to  appoint  a  medical  commission  to  investigate  the  need  for  a  health 
program,  such  a  body  could  easily  produce  evidence  of  the  necessity 
for  it  and  secure  action. 

BEGINNING     OF     PREVENTIVE     MEDICINE 

There  is  no  finer  chapter  in  medical  history  nor  one  that  is  more 
significant  than  that  which  records  the  first  achievements  in  prevention 
of  disease.  When  the  genius  of  a  country  doctor  connected  the  milk- 
maid with  the  cow,  and  devised  prevention  by  vaccination,  he  took  the 
first  step  toward  doubling  the  usefulness  of  our  profession  by  showing 
that  some  diseases  may  be  prevented.  What  Jenner  demonstrated  was 
not  only  a  matter  of  science  but  a  social  fact  of  great  importance. 
The  prevention  of  disease  earlier  received  an  impetus  from  the  old 
Venetians  when  they  put  the  word  quarantine  in  the  dictionary.  They 
might  have  waited  until  the  plague  had  developed  in  the  city  and  then 
have  administered  their  remedies ;  they  preferred  prevention. 

SOCIAL    LOSS     FROM     DISEASE 

Eleven  thousand  young  men  applied  for  the  Naval  Reserve  in  1913 
and  only  316  were  found  physically  fit.  It  has  been  said  that  these 
tests   are   severe.     They   are.     Should   the   United   States   lower   its 


standard  to  tit  our  degenerate  youth  or  should  we  raise  the  physical 
level  of  our  manhood?  These  tests  are  probably  not  higher  than  those 
any  normal  young  man  should  be  able  to  pass. 

The  annual  social  loss  f rjom  disease  is  equal  to  the  destruction  of'  a 
great  war.  This  is  all  the  more  regrettable,  because  most  of  it  is 
preventable.  It  is  a  serious  thing  that  there  are  more  than  500,000 
deaths  from  preventable  diseases  in  this  country  every  year.  400  times 
the  number  that  were  lost  on  the  Titanic,  a  tragedy  that  shocked  the 
world.  Three  hundred  thousand  babies  die  before  they  are  a  year  old, 
a  loss  of  which  the  tigures  are  a  poor  measure.  More  people  die 
before  the  fiftieth  year  in  the  United  States  now  than  in  the  time  of 
our  grandfathers,  though  in  several  European  countries  more  people 
live  beyond  the  fiftieth  year  than  was  the  case  two  generations  ago. 

Ripley  says  that  of  100  Jewish  babies  born  in  Massachusetts,  fifty 
will  be  alive  at  the  end  of  seventy  years.  Of  100  babies  other  than 
Jews  born  in  Massachusetts,  fifty  will  be  dead  in  forty-seven  years. 
Why  is  there  this  dilterence  of  twenty-three  years  under  essentially 
the  same  environment?  Is  it  due  to  a  more  intelligent  care  of  health 
and  a  better  scheme  of  life? 

There  are  said  by  school  authorities  to  be  500.000  feebleminded 
children  in  the  public  schools  of  this  country,  and  it  is  probable  that 
there  are  several  times  that  number  in  the  adult  population.  These 
morons  breed  true  to  the  laws  of  degeneracy  in  families  of  ten  and 
fifteen  children.  Where  will  this  country  find  room  for  the  2,000,000 
or  3,000,000  degenerates  of  this  class  that  we  will  have  two  genera- 
tions from  this  time?  Has  this  Association  ever  called  public  attention 
to  the  danger  that  the  feebleminded  may  pollute  the  healthy  blood  of 
this  nation? 

Man  seems  to  be  the  hardest  of  all  animals  to  kill.  Human 
beings  will  survive  mistreatment  that  would  kill  pigs  and  cows.  If  a 
man  kills  another  with  an  ax  or  a  pistol,  he  is  punished ;  if  he  should 
kill  a  man  with  a  slum  house,  he  is  not  punished,  though  the  men  who 
rent  slum  houses  are  so  much  more  dangerous  that  men  with  axes  and 
pistols  are  relatively  harmless  creatures.  The  owners  of  slum  houses 
help  to  fill  our  hospitals  with  sick  and  insane,  and  in  addition  they 
furnish  a  large  supply  of  degenerates  who  prey  on  society.  A  general 
plan  of  health  conservation  should  remedy  these  and  other  like  con- 
ditions that  cause  much  of  the  disease  we  see  in  public  hospitals  and 
much  of  the  degeneracy  that  we  meet  outside  of  them.  These  cases  of 
disease  are  the  natural  drift  from  such  sources  as  bad  housing  and  its 
many  attendant  evils  that  are  spreading  like  an  epidemic  not  only  in 
cities,  but  on  farms  and  in  villages.  Such  insanitary  homes  with  their 
inadequate  care  of  children  are  the  causes  of  much  stunted  growth, 


incompetence  and  disease.     Here  also  only  a  comprehensive  program 
of  health  conservation  can  correct  these  evils. 

No  discussion  of  this  subject  could  properly  omit  mention  of  our 
educational  system :  While  the  government  plan  of  health  conservation 
could  not  be  made  to  apply  to  education  in  the  states,  it  could  by  sug- 
gestion and  advice  make  health  conservation  in  all  the  states  the  first 
consideration  in  education.  Indirectly,  therefore,  a  government  plan 
would  determine  that  the  states  did  their  duty. 

HEALTH     CONSERVATION     SHOULD    BEGIN     IN     PUBLIC    SCHOOLS 

If  we  are  to  prevent  physical  degeneracy,  or  rather  if  we  are  to 
stop  that  which  is  now  going  on,  we  must  begin  with  the  children  in 
the  public  schools.  Their  health  should  not  only  be  guarded,  but  the 
training  of  their  bodies  is  quite  as  important  as  the  training  of  their 
minds.  This  should  appeal  to  the  intelligence  and  public  spirit  and  the 
essential  loyalty  of  every  physician,  less,  however,  as  a  medical  prac- 
titioner, than  as  a  man  who  understands  or  ought  to  understand  the 
importance  of  medical  sociology.  Every  man  and  woman  who  walks 
the  streets  today  is  essentially  a  product,  physically  and  mentally,  of 
our  schools.  Has  our  educational  system  been  a  success  —  if  not, 
why  not? 

The  power  and  much  of  the  genius  of  a  nation  depends  on  the 
health  of  its  citizens,  and  the  preparation  for  effective  living  and 
national  achievement  should  be  made  chiefly  during  the  growing 
period.  These  little  folks  who  are  the  raw  material  of  our  future 
citizenship  are  naturally  outdoor  animals.  Their  mental  activity  is 
founded  on  physical  activity.  Our  schools  will  never  be  organized  on 
the  proper  basis  until  we  recognize  and  put  in  practice  the  fundamental 
principle  that  physical  training  should  be  the  foundation  of  mental 
training. 

Every  medical  man  should  have  an  immediate  interest  in  existing 
methods  of  education,  and  especially  in  the  conditions  under  which 
those  methods  are  applied,  and  of  all  physicians  the  specialist  in  ner- 
vous and  mental  diseases  should  have  the  greatest  interest.  Any  one 
of  the  younger  specialists  of  this  Association  could  go  into  any  public 
or  private  school  today  and  select  with  an  approximation  to  accuracy 
a  pretty  large  group  of  pupils  who  will  probably  be  his  patients  or  his 
contemporaries'  patients  fifteen  or  twenty  years  from  this  time.  He 
will  need  to  interpret  the  significance  of  the  nervous  attitudes  of  the 
children,  the  instability  of  nerve  centers  shown  in  the  facial  expression 
and  in  the  general  irregular  muscular  movements  and  other  familiar 
signs  of  imperfect  development.  One  sees  in  these  cases  the  results 
of  half-starved  nerve  centers,  and  neglected  muscular  activities, 
struggling  in  vain  for  normal  expression  in  a  turmoil  of  wasteful  efifort. 


8 

Hundreds  of  thousands  of  young  people  are  yearly  going  out  into 
the  world  unprepared  for  life  because  their  only  training  in  school,  if 
training  it  may  be  called,  has  been  a  system  based  on  word  symbols. 
There  is  little  or  no  discipline  for  young  people  in  the  unrealities  of 
books ;  they  cannot  connect  them  with  life,  for  to  them  life  is  in  doing. 
The  failure  that  so  many  of  them  experience  in  after  years  is  also 
due,  in  large  degree,  to  a  lack  of  proper  physical  development.  From 
the  bad  mental  training  and  the  neglect  of  the  bpdy  there  results 
much  retardation,  mental  stagnation  and  physical  disability,  which 
make  incompetents  of  many  and  invalids  of  others,  while  a  few, 
through  the  miracles  that  nature  daily  performs,  get  into  the  small 
class  of  successful  people. 

The  commission  appointed  by  the  National  Educational  Association 
says  in  a  recent  report  that  it  would  focus  secondary  education  on  the 
great  social  objectives,  and  it  places  the  health  of  the  young  at  the 
head  of  the  list.  This  is  encouraging  for  our  teachers  as  a  class  have 
been  slow  to  recognize,  if  indeed  they  do  recognize,  the  important  fact 
that  health  and  sanity  and  success  in  life  depend  more  on  good  physical 
development  than  on  all  the  book  knowledge  that  has  been  or  can  be 
packed  into  the  healthily  rebellious  minds  of  the  young.  It  is  true  that 
manual  training  and  kindred  instructions  is  given  in  certain  schools, 
but  it  has  not  reached  the  great  mass  of  boys  and  girls  of  this  country. 

It  is  a  fundamental  fact  in  human  development  that  young  people 
have  a  positive  hunger  for  doing  things,  for  learning  as  the  race 
learned,  to  think  by  doing.  The  greatest  discovery  man  has  made  to 
date  was  the  first  tool  he  fashioned.  It  was  the  chief  means  of  the 
early  development  of  the  race,  and  so  deeply  is  this  primitive  talent 
planted  in  the  brain  that  every  psychiatrist  knows  that  the  ability  to  do 
things  is  one  of  the  last  faculties  lost.  In  teaching  the  young  how  to 
use  the  hands,  the  teacher  is  leading  them  over  the  long  way  the  race 
came ;  the  teacher  helps  them  to  short-circuit  the  race  process.  In  this 
way  even  a  dull  boy  can  be  taught  to  do  some  one  thing  well,  and  such 
training  will  save  many  from  the  failure  that  has  condemned  thou- 
sands to  insanity,  crime  or  pauperism. 

Any  physician  who  has  seen  much  of  the  insane  in  public  institu- 
tions must  have  been  impressed  with  the  large  number  of  this  class 
whose  mental  disorder,  where  the  basic  cause  could  be  explained,  has 
been  chiefly  due  to  the  fact  that  they  had  never  learned  to  do  any  one 
thing  well.  The  dullards  and  incompetents  that  come  from  our  public 
schools  would,  if  they  could  speak,  tell  a  tragic  story  of  the  failure  of 
the  educational  side  of  our  social  system. 


RESPONSIBILITY    OF    MEDICAL    PROFESSION     FOR    CONSERVATION 

OF    HEALTH 

It  is  an  important  truth  that  nothing  stands  alone  in  this  world,  not 
even  a  medical  association.  We  go  up  or  down  together.  We  are  here 
today  not  solely  because  we  are  physicians,  but  also  for  the  reason 
that  society  created  us  as  a  profession  because  it  needed  us,  and  we 
are  therefore  always  serving  its  purpose.  Our  most  private  work  is 
really  a  social  and  public  work,  so  that  in  all  we  do  we  are  going  on 
the  errands  of  society.  Each  one  of  us  is  an  essential  part  of  this 
moving  human  order  that  keeps  society  together  and  holds  humanity 
to  its  sober  tasks. 

The  world  is  passing  into  a  new  era.  Though  wars  cease  and  the 
harsher  strifes  of  men  may  disappear,  the  old  struggle  will  go  on 
under  other  forms  which  in  the  long  run  will  be  quite  as  destructive. 
Again  the  final  test  is  the  individual  test,  for  in  last  analysis  the  reserve 
power  of  a  nation  rests  on  the  ability  of  men  and  women  to  endure 
stress. 

We  cannot  say  that  race  decay  has  not  already  begun  among  the 
people  of  this  country.  There  is  much  evidence  that  it  has  begun. 
No  race  nor  nation,  not  even  our  own,  can  ever  be  free  from  the  con- 
ditions that  produce  degeneracy.  These  are  inherent  in  every  form 
of  human  organization.  They  are  all  the  more  dangerous  for  being 
subtle  and  obscure  in  operation.  They  may  act  through  generations 
lowering  the  resistances  of  individuals  and  families,  and  in  widening 
circles  a  nation  becomes  involved. 

Every  medical  association  and  every  society  should  do  systematic 
educational  work  with  the  public  in  the  interest  of  a  human  conserva- 
tion program.  Medical  men  should  not  be  willing  to  leave  to  others 
the  credit  or  the  task  of  leading  in  this  movement,  which  is  specifically 
a  social  duty  of  physicians.  The  profession  owes  it  to  society  and  to 
its  own  character  as  a  scientific  and  progressive  body  to  demand  that 
the  health  and  physical  vigor  of  the  men  and  women  of  the  nation 
be  cared  for  by  the  nation,  and  raised  to  the  highest  standard.  For 
this,  or  any  association  of  specialists,  to  take  official  notice  of  this 
subject,  I  realize  would  be  a  departure  from  custom.  Departures 
from  custom,  new  activities,  are  generally  highly  beneficial.  They 
furnish  stimulating  experiences  and  a  new  form  of  spiritual  exercise 
that  is  needed  by  the  best  of  men  and  even  by  associations.  They 
take  the  individual  into  bracing  altitudes ;  they  have  been  tonics  to  the 
social  body  in  many  an  invalid  period.  All  advance  has  been  due  to 
departures,  that  is,  to  new  views,  and  new  ideals  that  in  all  ages  have 
set  men's  thoughts  in  higher,  and  better  ways.  It  has  been  such 
departures  that  have  roused  the  inquiring,  pioneering  spirit  that  has 
led  to  great  discoveries  and  kept  men  moving  toward  new  horizons. 


10 

In  this  period  of  industrial  and  social  reconstruction  when  all  inter- 
tests  are  becoming  intertwined,  when  human  interspaces  grow  smaller, 
and  new  relations  create  problems  that  change  our  views  of  life  and 
society,  it  is  necessary  that  the  medical  profession  also  make  certain 
readiustments,  that  it  annex  human  interests  to  its  older  activities,  if 
its  members  are  to  maintain  its  fine  traditions  and  keep  step  with  social 
progress. 

All  professional  life  is  beset  by  the  danger  of  a  certain  bias  which 
habits  of  work  in  any  special  line  tend  to  create,  ^^'e  humans  are 
made  of  malleable  material  and  we  are  likely  to  be  moulded  to  a  rather 
definite  shape  by  our  occupation,  all  the  more  likely  because  the  process 
is  unconscious.  It  is  not  easy  to  resist  the  common  tendency  to  become 
set  in  certain  habits  and  ways  of  thinking,  with  the  result  of  lessening 
of  general  interests,  a  limiting  of  intellectual  curiosity  and  growth, 
which  cause  many  men  to  atrophy  on  some  of  the  best  sides  of 
character. 

Society  needs  now,  and  needs  more  than  ever  before,  men  who 
answer  to  that  severest  test  of  character  —  the  ability  to  grow.  Xot 
the  linear  growth  that  is  in  the  direct  way  of  men's  daily  work  and 
which  is  a  relatively  easy  process ;  men  are  needed  who  are  capable  of 
lateral  growth,  who  recognize  the  new  human  borderland  of  interests 
that  increasingly  demand  attention.  It  needs  men  who  take  the  social 
view  of  their  work,  who  understand  the  individual  and  social  value 
of  life  and  see  the  importance  of  increasing  that  value. 

The  people  of  this  country  do  not  appreciate  the  need  of  human 
conservation ;  they  have  not  been  told  as  only  doctors  could  tell  them 
that  it  is  necessary  and  urgent.  Shall  we  wait  and  allow  society 
finally  to  lead,  or  shall  we  take  the  wider  view  of  our  mission,  and 
become  the  pioneers  of  a  great  constructive  movement? 
And  now  permit  me,  gentlemen,  to  indulge  my  fancy. 
Fifty  years  from  this  time  a  medical  historian  will  refer  to  this 
Congress  and  the  proceedings  of  this  section.  To  make  the  record 
complete  he  may  mention  the  poor  performance  of  this  presidential 
hour.  I  read  what  he  will  write :  "At  the  opening  of  the  neurological 
section  the  president  omitted  the  subject  of  neurology  and  spoke  on 
human  conservation,  though  he  did  -this  rather  apologetically,  as 
though  he  were  afraid  of  ofifending  someone.  Being,  however,  an 
elderlv  man  and  evidently  a  person  of  good  intentions,  he  was  listened 
to  politely. 

"After  that  time  the  medical  profession  went  far  beyond  the  feeble 
suggestions  of  the  speaker,  of  1919,  and  the  American  Neurological 
Association  in  particular  recognizing  the  importance  of  medical 
sociolog)^  made  itself  famous  by  developing  a  plan  that  has  achieved 


11 


astonishing  results  in  fifty  years.  Briefly,  the  physique  of  the  Amer- 
ican people  has  been  recreated  since  that  time  and  they  now  are  known 
as  the  most  vigorous  and  virile  and  efficient  nation  in  the  world. 

'The  writer  regrets  to  say  that,  after  careful  research,  he  has  failed 
to  find  any  record  of  the  name  or  the  fame,  if  he  had  any,  of  the 
president  of  the  American  Neurological  Association  of  1919." 


139885 


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